Pathways

Vol. XXXII No. 2

Summer 2008 Issue

OHC Requests Nominations
to the Board of Directors
The Ohio Humanities Council is currently accepting nominations for Ohioans from the public and private sectors – scholars and professionals – to serve as Board members and help guide the Council in the future.

Board members review grant applications and vote on proposals submitted to OHC for funding, attend quarterly Board meetings, serve on subcommittees, assist in fundraising and advocacy work, take part in long-range planning, and help promote public awareness of the OHC and its objectives. Members serve a three-year term on a volunteer basis, with the possibility of serving a second three-year term.

OHC’s Nominating Committee requires a letter of interest and a resume from all potential candidates. If you have any questions about board responsibilities or the work of the Council, please contact our office for more information.

Staff Update
The Council is pleased to welcome Jim Calder to the staff. Jim will be the Webmaster and Digital History Associate for OHC. Jim grew up in Cleveland and recently graduated from Cleveland State University with an MA in history. At CSU, Jim worked on an oral history project about the Euclid Corridor, which helped fuel his interest in public history projects in urban environments. With help from a CSU professor, he also helped manage the Teaching American History grants on OHC’s Gateway to History website.

At OHC, Jim will primarily focus on work associated with building the Gateway website. We have additional ways to make use of Jim’s training and technology skills, including helping with the council’s own website and exploring the potential of the Omeka software for our civic tourism initiative. Jim is fascinated by how technology can be integrated with academic history; his work at the Council will help him explore those issues.

Oral History
Institute

This year’s Oral History Institute was once again held on the campus of Kenyon College on June 3-5. This is the eighth year OHC has presented the Institute. We received a record number of applications for the program and had a full enrollment of 32, plus a waiting list. Among the diverse group of participants this year, 13 were from Ohio; the other 19 came from 15 different states, as well as one Canadian province. Ten represented historical societies or museums, eight were professors, six were archivists or librarians, five were graduate students, and three were independent scholars.

The institute was originally inspired by the large number of grant proposals OHC received for support of oral history projects in advance of the state’s bicentennial in 2003. Intended for beginners in the ﬁeld, the 2 ½ day institute covers the entire process of conducting an oral history project – from initial planning to conducting, transcribing, and archiving interviews, and then to designing and presenting public programs based on them. An especially helpful feature is that participants form small groups and actually conduct a mini-project from start to ﬁnish.

A signiﬁcant change coming in the next year will be the publication of a book by Ohio University Press on how to conduct oral history projects. The book is a collaborative effort by the institute’s faculty: former OHC board member Donna DeBlasio of Youngstown State University; David Mould of Ohio University; Steve Paschen of Kent State University, and Howard Sacks of Kenyon College. These four scholars worked with OHC and the Local History Office of the Ohio Historical Society to develop the curriculum for the Institute, and they have comprised its faculty since that time. With much of the program’s content about to be published, the faculty intends to meet this winter to discuss how the program can be redesigned to make the best use of the book and increase the institute’s effectiveness.